TAMPA — First comes a ball. Not just any ball, but one so far up and out of the strike zone as to associate it with a stumble or slip or a Little Leaguer.
So it is the next one roaring away from the plate and barreling into the dirt that rivets attention; oddity becoming pattern. It is at this moment that Dellin Betances also takes greater note, which turns bad to worse. The mechanical merging with its partner in pitching crime: the mental.
“Every time you don’t think about fastball away, the pitch you are supposed to be executing, and start thinking about other things, it is no good,” Betances said. “When you are not good, you end up thinking about a lot of stuff.”
Betances goes through the familiar checklist of what can be malfunctioning — is he staying back or drifting too quickly forward, is he opening up his front shoulder too much? Which lever in his elongated, 6-foot-8 body is out of sync? And while he is calibrating, ball three comes. A new evil to the process — when Betances needs a deep breath and to slow down, the game is speeding up.
“It’s not embarrassment, it’s disappointment,” Betances said. “You work so hard and know what you are capable of doing and you are trying to find yourself and you just are not where you want to be.”
Now, he sees Gary Sanchez or Austin Romine perhaps pantomime a folded shoulder to indicate to stay closed. The murmuring in the crowd intensifies and becomes the soundtrack to a growing crisis. You try not to hear it, but good luck. Ball four brings a glance to the dugout. Is pitching coach Larry Rothschild on the top step? Is someone already warming in the pen?
“When you are going your best, it is all about game plan, focus on getting the hitter out by thinking pitch, location and throw,” Betances said. “There were times last year when I was thinking about more than that.”
The worst of times was late, when Betances lost the strike zone, his concentration and, ultimately, his job. One of the game’s most dominant relievers became a last resort for Joe Girardi as the Yankees tried to win a championship.
The before and after dichotomy has been well hashed. Betances struck out the side on 12 pitches to complete a Sept. 2 victory over the Red Sox. His season stats at that point: 2.29 ERA/.492 OPS against in 55 games. Afterward: 6.23/.794 in 11 games.
The dirty secret, though, is that even in the good times, Betances’ control was worse than ever. But the devastation of his fastball/curveball combination bailed him out in a way it did not over the final few weeks.
For the season, he hit 11 batters — two more than he had previously in his whole career. His 6.6 walks per nine innings were the most by any reliever with 60 or more appearances since 2013 and the most ever by a Yankee.
One ramification is Betances now is often minimized or viewed as a wild card when discussing the anticipation of an overpowering Yankees bullpen. Front and center are closer Aroldis Chapman, 2017 revelation Chad Green and July acquisitions Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson. But as Rothschild said: “I’ll take [Betances’] body of work over the last four years against anyone. This guy has been to the last four All-Star Games.”
Betances is pretty much with Chapman, Zach Britton, Wade Davis, Kenley Jansen, Craig Kimbrel and Andrew Miller in any vital category for relievers from 2014-17 — top five, for example, in Wins Above Replacement, ERA-plus, OPS-plus and strikeout percentage.
But here is something else: Over the last four years, Betances leads the majors in relief innings, is second in batters faced and third in innings.
Could less be more for Betances? Less work, less weight, less on his mind. The presence of so many quality choices for Aaron Boone removes the need for Betances to be summoned for every pre-ninth inning predicament.
Could that, combined with a weight loss of 14 pounds, keep him fresher, longer in 2018? Betances also fixated on maintaining his mechanics and being more precise with his fastball after spending much of last season ricocheting between different deliveries, the battle magnified for a player his size trying to keep long, moving parts timed up properly.Perhaps, his mind is less cluttered as well. He began last spring in a fight with the Yankees, losing his arbitration hearing and having team president Randy Levine publicly blasting his agents for asking too much in the process, with one of the representatives, Jim Murray, verbally retaliating.
This year, Betances settled at $5.1 million and Rothschild noted, “Dellin has come in with a really good state of mind.”
Yes, the mind. Betances agrees, he has found peace after all the on-mound discussions that strayed away from keeping it simple — fastball away or curve down. And Betances believes if the mind is right, then the body (of work) follows.
“I know what I can do,” he said. “I feel confident I can get back to being the Betances I can be.”